ABSTRACT
Although a few details on the techniques of cave exploration were printed in the first half of the 20th century (Boegan & Bertarelli, 1926), the extremely fast development in exploration techniques experienced from 1960 to 1980 provided an incentive for the production of several technical manuals, the most well known being Techniques de la spéléologie alpine (Marbach et al., 1973), which was printed in four different editions from 1973 to 2000 and On Rope (Padgett & Smith, 1996).
